The Ballad of Dinah Caldwell Read online

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  TO MY SIBLINGS:

  Tricia, Sean, Matt, Aimee, Rebekah, Sam, Lydia, Jake, Rebecca, John, Hannah, and Mark, who are all so wonderful that they have never once tried to cut me out of the family.

  I wrote this book for them.

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  THE WHOLE COUNTY HELD ITS BREATH WHEN THE SILVER TRUCK pulled away from that big, gabled house in the valley. The wheel of Charlotte County spun around the axle of Gabriel Gates, and when he moved, the county moved, too.

  That silver truck hadn’t pulled up the dirt driveway of Dinah Caldwell’s farm in four years—not since he’d called due the loan on her father’s garage in town. And since they hadn’t been able to pay it, Gates had taken the shop and the tools and the last shred of her father’s hope and said he could run the garage as an employee.

  There wasn’t much left for Gates to take, though, so Dinah had no idea why he’d be parking his truck on the cracked dirt of their driveway.

  Her mother was home by herself. And no matter why that man was here, she couldn’t run to the little two-bedroom house across the patchy grass of the yard. Because then her brother would follow.

  Warren slowly stood up from his seat on the old fallen tree. He was always putting his favorite stones and little figures he carved into the mossy, rotted-out end. “What do you think he wants?”

  The door of that big, self-driving truck slammed.

  “Nothing good.” Dinah couldn’t take her eyes off the man walking toward her house.

  Warren picked up his gun. It was only a .243 bolt action, but it was still deadly.

  Bright, late October sunlight spilled warmth over the dying grass, a lie about the cold in the air. But the sun couldn’t reach them here, a few yards into the woods, and Gabriel Gates couldn’t see them, either.

  A gunshot ruptured the air.

  “Damn it, Warren, if you can’t be more careful with that, I’m taking it away.”

  “I am being careful. And you would not.” Warren frowned, but he turned away from his target-shooting tree and held the gun more carefully.

  She would so, and he knew it. Dinah watched him from the corner of her eye. Something about eleven-year-old boys must make them reckless.

  Or maybe seeing that vehicle here made him a little sick, too.

  Warren kicked a cluster of fallen maple leaves, flicking bright red sails into the air. Dust bloomed around them. In the drought of the last six years, half the lakes in the Ozarks had dried up. Too many people in the county had already caved to one of Gates’s bad loans, sold to him for the money to start over, or straight-up given him their farm in return for a monthly paycheck to run it.

  Her mother’s deal to trade water from their well for food from the neighbors was the only reason any of them were still here.

  “I bet I could hit his tires.” Warren swung the gun around and took aim.

  “Don’t you dare.” He wouldn’t actually do it. Brian Shaw, the big white guy Gates had hired as a bodyguard from out in Kansas, sat in the back.

  Besides, that truck was worth more than everything they owned—one of maybe three vehicles she’d ever seen in her life that had been made after the 2029 depression. The handful of other cars or trucks in the area were at least forty years old—most people rode little motorbikes, a lot of ancient Z125s and Honda Groms, since they were so cheap and easy to work on. People needed their vehicle to last through three or four rebuilds at least.

  Warren didn’t answer, but he lowered the gun and immediately coughed. The cold air and dust made his asthma worse. So did stress.

  Every time, that sound made her desperate. He didn’t use to wheeze like that when the temperature changed.

  Warren reached into the end of the mossy log and brought out a little wooden bird, half-carved. Because he knew, too. They couldn’t go home while that man was here. “We don’t owe him anything,” he said.

  “We don’t.” Dinah rolled open her knife sheath and pulled out the middle blade.

  Him taking the garage in town had settled their debt. Gabriel Gates wasn’t a bank, just a local farmer whose family had been here for five generations, same as most.

  But her mother had been crying some nights, for months, and she wouldn’t say why.

  Dinah stood, her favorite knife in her hand. Her lightest drop-point. All her knives were single-piece and double edged, but this one was her favorite for throwing. Good aim took constant practice, and if she imagined the tree was a man, a very specific man, her aim improved.

  Usually she imagined this pin oak was her father, and she threw those blades until her arms ached. Today, she was picturing Gabriel Gates. But it didn’t really matter. This tree was a skeleton man, and her knife would turn him from skin and blood into bones.

  She was distracted enough for the blade to strike and bounce, instead of sink.

  She shook her head once, hard, and pulled out a second knife. Her blades weren’t true throwing knives, but she needed them for more than target practice. She balanced the blade and her body, and she whipped the knife into the air. It split tree bark and held.

  Warren grinned. “There you go.” His coat was too big, and he looked younger than eleven in it. It only belonged to him because it no longer belonged to their father. Warren’s gaze strayed again through the trees to their house.

  She yanked her knife out of the tree and sat beside him. He started working away on the little bird. She watched his knife tracing texture, so carefully, onto the individual feathers.

  “Isn’t it weird how birds have wings and legs?” he said. “Like, they can hop around on the ground, but they can also fly high up if they want. Which would you rather have? Wings or legs.”

  If she’d been born with either one, she’d be fine with it, but she didn’t want to have to make the choice. “I dunno. Wings seem pretty risky.”

  “Legs are risky, too, though.” Warren flipped the bird over and started working on the other wing.

  A door banged. Gates strode out to his truck, but they could barely see him around the corner of the house. He was thin-faced and broad-shouldered, and in those suits he always wore, just a bit too long, he looked like a skeleton pretending to be human.

  Warren pulled his gaze away from Gates back to her. Her brother’s gray eyes were just like their mom’s. Deep. Intelligent. Scared. Trying to figure out a world that didn’t want him.

  The driverless silver truck backed carelessly out of the yard.

  “How about you go feed the chickens?” she said. “I should help Mom with dinner.”

  The rumble of the engine faded. Warren’s shoulders relaxed. “Yeah. Okay.”

  Dinah headed for the house. Warren would mess around outside until she made him come in. Telling him to feed the chickens just gave him an excuse to avoid going inside. Because even as scared as he was, he didn’t want to know. He wanted to do his carvings and take care of his chickens and climb around in t
he ravine. And she could at least give him that.

  Dinah ran up the steps and left the door open. The house was too warm. “Mom?”

  “I’m in here.” The voice came from the kitchen. “Could you start the biscuits for dinner?”

  Asking would only kill this spiraling, terrible hope that Gabriel Gates hadn’t wanted anything bad. That everything was fine, and nothing would change. But she was helpless to stop herself. “What did he want?”

  Ellen Caldwell came out of the kitchen, glanced around the living room. “Where’s Warren? Kara’s coming over after dinner, I assume?” Her voice trembled a bit. Her hair hung down to her shoulders in long, brown waves.

  Her mother’s hair was never down. She always wore it up, out of the way. It had been up two hours ago, when Dinah had left the house.

  “He’ll be inside in a bit. And yeah, Kara will probably bring over her lesson planning.” Dinah squinted. Her mother moved toward the window, and as her hair swung forward, Dinah saw the marks.

  “Mom!” She touched her mother’s shoulder, moved aside the hair. Red, oval bruises the size of fingerprints dotted her pale neck. Some ran together in a mess of darkening color on her shoulder.

  “Don’t, okay?” Her mother pushed her away, gently, letting her hair fall again. “I’m fine.” She strode into the kitchen and pulled a mixing bowl from the cabinet.

  Dinah had been right outside while that happened, fucking around in the woods. “He hurt you.”

  Her mother’s shoulders dropped. She moved closer, put her flour-dusted palms on either side of Dinah’s face. “I can see you taking on all this. I can see it on your face. That’s the last thing I wanted.” Dinah moved her mother’s hands and sat down at the table. The chair creaked. “So I have to be fine with him choking you?” “He just grabbed my shoulder.” Her mother scooped flour into the bowl. The metal measuring cup trembled. “He says foreclosing on the garage didn’t pay the interest on the loan.”

  Bullshit. “He hasn’t said anything for four years and suddenly he wants more money?”

  Lines tightened around her mother’s eyes. “Not suddenly. He’s been sending notices. I pay a few dollars each time, I just can’t pay it all.”

  Her mother was as threadbare as their dish cloths. One good tug might shred her to pieces.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” She could have done something, at least tried.

  Her mother’s head snapped up. “Because you’re barely seventeen, and there was nowhere to get the money anyway. It’s not something I wanted you worrying about.”

  The bang of the henhouse door sounded outside.

  “How much do we owe?” Dinah whispered.

  “Five thousand dollars.” Her mother set the measuring cup on the table. “He wants the well as payment.”

  And there it was. The punchline of a years-long setup. And they were just as helpless as if they’d been tied hands and feet, left in the road for his big silver truck to roll right over them.

  Dinah stumbled to her feet and out the front door. She gripped the porch railing and sucked in cold air.

  He could not have the well. She wouldn’t let him take their water.

  If her father had kept working as Gates’s employee in the garage, they’d have been able to pay back the loan. Gates wouldn’t have a reason to claim their well, to charge Kara’s family and the Franklins and everyone else prices they could barely afford for water.

  But no, her father had left with no explanation, with no good-bye, with no reason other than the fight she’d heard between her parents the night before he walked away. I can’t take watching it happen, he’d said. This is my fault. Over and over.

  She’d been asleep when he left, everyone had been, but her mind had still formed this memory of him walking down the driveway, a bag over his shoulder.

  It hadn’t been his fault before then. From that night on, it had been his fault.

  A wasp crawled along the porch railing by her hands, then lifted its wings and flew to the pears. Three buckets from Kara’s orchard, in exchange for water, filled until they were top-heavy with honey-yellow fruit for canning, for mashing into sauce, for preserving in syrup for pies.

  Everything they’d done here didn’t mean a thing if Gates decided to pull on the tentacles he’d wrapped around these mountains.

  Dinah kicked one of the buckets over. Yellow spilled across the porch, tumbled down the steps. Pears spinning into the dirt, bumping into each other like billiard balls.

  Shit.

  Dinah dropped to her knees. She picked up one of the pears by her leg and placed it gently into the bucket. Most of these would be so bruised they’d have to mash them all.

  She scrambled after the ones by her feet, and then scooted to the steps.

  But when she looked up, there was Warren. Around the side of the porch, watching her through the railing. Eyes wide in shock.

  Overhead, the sky was as flat and calm as a pale blue sea.

  “Sorry,” Dinah said quietly.

  Warren crouched down and, holding up the hem of his coat, loaded the pears by his feet into the basket it made. He picked one up off their river rock in the flower bed.

  Seven years ago, she’d pulled that gray rock out of the dried-up creek. Her handprint in green paint rested on the rock across from Warren’s, their names and ages written below. Dinah, ten. Warren, four.

  When you are ten, you’re already a whole person, holding the weight of what it means to have your brother be four and have him looking at you like that. And when he gets older, the years between you mean less, but you still think of him like he’s four because he needed more than he got, and you helped him learn to walk, and brother meant mine.

  Dinah bent down and picked up the pears on the steps, but every one Warren touched was one she should have reached. She was supposed to be the one making things okay.

  When every piece of fruit was placed gently back in the bucket, Warren went inside, and Dinah sank down on the steps.

  She ought to stand up. She shouldn’t just sit here like this, letting the dusk hide her burning face and the breeze dry out her eyes. Dinah dug her hands into her hair, pulled on the strands until her scalp hurt.

  Even with five thousand dollars hanging over her head, she still had to worry about bruised pears rotting and then nothing to eat in February.

  None of this was helping. Dinah stood up, brushed off her jeans, and went back inside. The scent of hot butter and browning biscuits permeated the living room.

  Her mother was sitting on the couch, hands folded. “Come here for a second.”

  Dinah sat down in the old rocking chair. At least this wasn’t pretending.

  Ellen spoke quietly, so her voice wouldn’t carry to Warren in his room. “I haven’t signed anything over to Gates. He might say I have, but I haven’t. This house is ours and so is the well and everything else. No, let me finish. The deed is under the kitchen sink. If something ever happens, take the deed, take Warren, and leave. Just go, okay? Maybe if you have it, you’d eventually be able to come back.”

  “What do you mean, ‘if something happens’? And where the hell would we go?” If somewhere to go existed, they would have left a long time ago. If Little Rock and St. Louis weren’t already choked with people who’d left their dustbowl farms and ghost towns; if every job in the cities hadn’t already been taken. There wasn’t anywhere to go.

  Moving to the city took money. Hiring a truck to move your things. A deposit for renting an apartment. Money for food, rent, and utilities while everyone searched for jobs. Money for nice clothes for interviews so no one would think you were poor and desperate and therefore unqualified.

  A tiny crease appeared between her mother’s eyebrows. “You’ve already taken on so much. We couldn’t have made it through the last four years if you hadn’t. But if something does happen, you’ve got to take care of Warren.”

  Of course she’d take care of Warren. “What are you talking about?”

  “Just in c
ase. That’s all. No matter what, don’t try to talk to Gates, just leave. Go to Kara’s. Ask her parents for help. Or go to the Franklins’ or McCaffreys’” Ellen stood and headed for the kitchen.

  Dinah had zero desire to talk to Gabriel Gates. Use him as target practice, maybe. Put one of her knives through his eye.

  But Dinah wasn’t done with this subject. She grabbed her mom’s sleeve as she walked past. “We’ll figure this out.”

  Her eyes might as well be Warren’s. “Honey, we’ll see.”

  “No, I mean it. I’ll—” She couldn’t say this to her mom, because her mother would panic and tell her not to do things that obviously had to be done.

  She’d quit school and find an extra job. Maybe at the store in town, or as a teacher’s assistant like Kara had started doing in addition to working at the orchard.

  That wouldn’t pay off their debt, though. And it wouldn’t be enough to replace what the water had given them. It might not even keep them from starving.

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  KARA TEXTED HER ALL THROUGH DINNER. DINAH’S SCHOOL tablet buzzed on the counter every five minutes. Tablets had never been allowed at Caldwell dinners and never would be, so Dinah couldn’t read the texts until after the dishes were done.

  Mom made pea soup again. What is it with her and peas? I’m dying

  She never remembers how much I hate peas. They’re like tiny green brains. Is this all Germans or just my mother? Save me

  Matías and Hannah are the noisiest kids on the planet. Why does being a child equal constant screaming??

  Ok I’ve got my work stuff, headed over

  Reception wasn’t great and sometimes texts took a while to send, but at least they had service—when she was Warren’s age, there hadn’t been any. It wasn’t until she was twelve that Amazon Internet had sent their high-altitude drones over rural areas, piecing together an aerial wireless network. She’d never thought of herself as poor before, but when the Department of Education had put an antenna for the drone network at school, her teachers had talked about why the government had given money for it. To “address the education crisis of the American rural poor,” they’d said.